Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) made it into a six-rider breakaway and held off the chasers before making an attack of his own. With 12 km to go, he dropped all the remaining riders and rode to glory in Tortoreto.
“I won with my style, putting on a show,” Sagan said at the finish. “I’m very happy, what can I say… finally. I’ve been trying since we started again, at Strade Bianche, Milan San Remo, the Tour de France. I’ve been on the podium a lot of times but I had my last victory last year in the Tour de France, a long time ago.”
The Bora-Hansgrohe team worked well for Sagan during the Tour, much more than everybody was used to in recent years. And they carried that to the Giro as well. So it was a well-deserved win for the whole team.
“Finally, it arrived and I’m very happy. We were in the breakaway all day, I had good legs and went solo on the uphill before descending with attention on the downhill and then full gas in the final kilometres.”
Peter Sagan now has 147 points in the race for the ciclamino jersey while Arnaud Dèmare, his main sprinting rival at the Giro, has 167. The Slovak is not far behind then and we might be in for another interesting competition.
Can Sagan turn it around? What do you think? He now has stage wins in all three Grand Tours which must be a huge boost for his confidence.
